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Category: State Senate

Officially speaking, according to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s spokesman, Josh Vlasto, the governor “will take the appropriate steps to ensure New Yorkers in the 27th district are represented in the state Senate” now that ex-Sen. Carl Kruger has resigned as part of a plea deal in his federal corruption case. Cuomo has the authority to call …

As expected and widely reported, now-former Sen. Carl Kruger has resigned the Brooklyn Senate seat he has held since February 1994 when he won it in (a tad ironically) a special election. UPDATE: As per NY1, which was in the courtroom this afternoon…Kruger pleaded guilty to four of the five counts against him, crying while …

Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos continued his ongoing effort to remain thisclose to Gov. Andrew Cuomo during a a radio interview this morning, informing WOR’s John Gambling that he and the state’s top Democrat have made a mutual “commitment” to continue treading the path of fiscal conservatism and keep Albany from getting mired in gridlock. …

Two readers have forwarded me a full-page ad that’s running in Hamodia, an Orthodox Jewish weekly newspaper in NYC, and touts $15 million in “direct funding” directed to a wide variety of Jewish organizations by Brooklyn Councilman Lew Fidler, who is gearing up for a state Senate run next fall. The ad appears after the …

There’s been a lot of post-game analysis since Gov. Andrew Cuomo craftily included a partial elimination of the controversial MTA payroll tax in the tax code deal to help win over the (eventually unanimous) support of the Senate GOP for joining him in an about-face in raising taxes on New York’s wealthiest residents. Much has …

There’s a lot of defending going on in the wake of yesterday’s JCOPE appointments announcement, which revealed a number of politically connected individuals have been tapped to serve as Albany’s top ethics watchdogs. I reached out to Assembly Minority Leader Brian Kolb, who is under fire for filling his one allotted appointment with Watertown attorney …

Senate Democratic Conference Leader John Sampson is catching heat for his appointment of attorney Ravi Batra to Albany’s new ethics watchdog: JCOPE. Batra, who is filling the Senate Dems’ lone committee seat, has been operating in Democratic circles – particularly legal/judicial circles – for some time. He was connected to disgraced former Assemblyman/Brooklyn Democratic boss …